Pushing the shopping cart down the aisle, Taylor watched Amy pick a box of cookies off the shelf. "These ones?"

"Yep. Get two boxes."

"OK." They went into the cart on top of the other shopping.

"We need some cheese and jalapenos for nachos as well," Taylor said, turning around and heading towards the dairy section. "Then I think we're done, unless you can think of anything else."

Amy looked over the items in the cart, shaking her head after a moment. "No, combined with all the stuff you got yesterday we have enough to feed dozens of people. If we eat all this we'll lie around groaning all night rather than doing any work."

"Don't forget, Mandy's coming," Taylor grinned. "She could probably put all this in her mouth in one go."

Both of them snickered, the way their friend tended to show off at lunch was legendary at school. "She'll make her future boyfriend very happy," Amy remarked with an evil grin.

Taylor stared at her, then nearly fell over laughing. "How very rude, miss Dallon," she said when she recovered. Wiggling her eyebrows suggestively, the other girl smirked.

"Been hanging around on the internet too long, I think," she replied. "Or with Dennis. Or both."

"Let's get on with it, we need to be back before anyone else turns up." They quickly retrieved the last items required and headed towards the tills.

"Hello, Taylor," a familiar voice said as they were walking, making her stop dead, then turn around.

"Mr Barnes," she replied rather coldly, making him wince a little. "How… unexpected to see you here."

"Even lawyers shop for food, Taylor," he said, seeming uncomfortable, and lifting the basket he had in one hand as illustration. "How are you? You look well."

"Thank you." Taylor studied him for a moment. He appeared tired and somewhat depressed. "How are you?"

"I've been better," he admitted. "Life has been… somewhat difficult… in the last couple of months. But we're slowly improving."

He glanced at Amy, then back to Taylor. "I didn't know you knew the Dallons," he added. "Hello, Amy."

"Mr Barnes." Amy nodded politely to him. "I haven't seen you in nearly a year."

"I remember, it was the last office party when you and Vicky came with your mom. Are you well? I've seen you on the internet quite a lot in the company of some very unusual people."

Amy smiled a little. "I'm doing very well, actually, Mr Barnes. Since I met Taylor at school when she transferred, life seems to have improved a lot in all sorts of ways."

"Good to hear."

"Amy and Vicky are both good friends," Taylor put in. "People I'm glad to have met. I think I can trust them without fear of betrayal." She watched as he winced. "Something a little rare in my life in recent years."

"God, you really do remind me of your mother," he sighed. "Same way with words." After a moment, he went on, "Emma is… slowly improving. She's going to sessions with the psychiatrist three times a week. In the last couple of weeks she's finally appeared to realize what she did and has been very depressed. I don't suppose you'd…?"

Shaking her head with a firm but unemotional expression and no real internal sense of loss any more, Taylor replied, "No. I have no intention of reopening old wounds. Like I told you, I accept, I don't forget or forgive. That part of my life is over." She saw him sag a little. "I'm sorry, but I really don't think it would be good for either one of us. The friend I knew went away a long time ago and I can't see her ever coming back. But I don't have any particular desire to see any of you hurt. I just don't want to think about it any more. I'm happy now and I want to stay that way."

"I understand," he said in a low voice. "And once again, I'm sorry. If I'd realized what was happening sooner..."

"I don't blame you, Mr Barnes," she assured him. "I know you didn't know, and it's not your fault, Emma did what she did quite deliberately for whatever reason she had all by herself. But… while I can accept it, I don't like it, and it forever tainted my memories of her." She paused, then somewhat reluctantly added at the urging of the Varga, "I hope she gets better. One day, perhaps, she can make some new friends the same as I did, and with luck, be happy as well."

"I suppose that's all I can hope for," he nodded. After a moment, he asked, "Have you had any contact with the other two girls?"

"Sophia is gone, I haven't seen her since then," Taylor replied. "I can't say I miss her. I bumped into Madison a few weeks ago, we had words, and she left. That was the last time I saw her." She shrugged. "We don't move in the same circles these days, luckily."

The man sighed a little once more. "All for the best, I think. Well, I must get on, I still have work to do. It was nice seeing you." Turning away, he paused, then looked back. "Please tell Danny I'd like to talk again at some point. I didn't feel right calling, considering… everything."

"I'll let Dad know," she said. "Goodbye, Mr Barnes."

"Goodbye, Taylor. Amy." He nearly smiled, then headed deeper into the shop.

Both girls looked at each other, then resumed their path. "That was awkward," Amy commented quietly.

"It wasn't entirely ideal, definitely," Taylor replied.

"Are you ever going to talk to Emma again?"

"Not if I can help it," she sighed. "I can live with what happened, thanks to you and other friends. Madison was easy to deal with. Sophia… If she stays out of my life I have no real issues any more. But Emma? She was so close to me for so long, then she did what she did… It was worse than anything I could have imagined. Seeing her might bring that back despite my best efforts and I don't want to lose my temper. I try really hard not to these days."

"You succeed better than I can believe," Amy said softly, putting her hand on her friend's shoulder and giving it a gentle squeeze. "If someone had done something like that to me, I don't think I could have let it go."

"I had a lot of help from someone who gives very good advice and takes the long view," Taylor replied with a small smile. "He helped all of us and I owe him everything."

"No, you don't, Brain," the Varga rumbled inside her head, sounding touched. "We are a team, and always will be."

Pleased that she had real friends, and content with her place in life these days, Taylor smiled at her friends both internal and external and kept pushing the cart.

Math, snacks, and movies awaited them. Three things she thoroughly enjoyed

"You have an odd expression," Danny said as he studied Lisa's face. "The usual 'I know something you don't' look isn't there. Stop it, you're freaking me out."

He grinned when she laughed for a moment, the thoughtful look turning humorous. "Sorry, I was just thinking about someone I met earlier."

Inspecting her closely, he pushed the pile of paperwork on his desk to one side and put his elbows on it. "What did you do, Lisa?" he asked slowly.

"Do?" she said with a slightly guilty look.

"Do. You did something and you're not sure if it was the right thing or not. Who was it and what was it?"

She stared at him for a couple of seconds, then got up from her chair and went to the door, opening it a crack and looking out, then closing it again. After peering around the room carefully she resumed her seat. "How do you do that?" she asked curiously. "I know how I can work out things, but you keep managing to pull off something weirdly close with people. I'm beginning to think you have powers too."

Danny chuckled, shaking his head. "No, I don't. But I do have nearly twenty years practice in reading people, in all sorts of conditions. You either get good at it or end up losing out." He shrugged slightly. "I'm very good at it. And I have a pretty solid lock on your tells. They're tiny, but they're there."

Lisa looked amused. "You must be very good at poker."

"You'd think so, but I'm actually terrible at it. Anyway, stop changing the subject. Talk."

"Damn. You saw right through me," she said. "OK. Um." The girl seemed to consider her words. "I… may have talked to one of the Merchants. One of the capes."

"Which one?" he asked after staring at her for a second. "Skidmark is away. Mush might be around, I suppose, but from everything I've heard about him he's a follower and not a leader, and not that bright either. They don't have any other Parahumans that I know about right now..." He raised his eyebrows. "So, that means Squealer."

"Yes. Not bad."

"And?"

"I sort of saved her life."

He looked at her as she fell silent, then shook his head, wryly smiling. "I thought you were arranging to learn more about them. How did that turn into saving Squealer's life?"

"You're not surprised that I did, just that I had the chance," she stated after watching him for a couple of seconds.

"Because you're a good person. Saving someone is exactly what I'd expect if you had the chance. I'm merely wondering how you ended up in that position, that's all."

The blonde smiled a little sadly. "My personal history involves losing someone close to me," she said quietly. "I'm a little sensitive to situations where someone might end up killing themselves." She paused, swallowed, then started telling him an interesting story, very quietly. Metis wasn't referred to by name even though neither of them thought anyone could overhear.

When she finished, she just looked at him while he thought for a while. Eventually, he smiled at her.

"I think you did the right thing. I also have an idea why you felt you had to. Whether it will bear fruit I have no idea, all we can do is wait and see. The information you got is useful aside from that, as well. We have a good idea of how many people Skidmark could bring to bear, and a rough idea of when."

"Best I can figure it's probably between one and two weeks," she agreed. "I think less than a week is unlikely. But it's not impossible that things will change. We need to be ready for anything as soon as possible."

Danny sighed. "Yes, I think you're right. Damn it. I really don't want to end up in a fight, especially one as pointless as this. But we can't take the chance." Looking around in his pile of papers, he removed a few sheets. "This is what we've been offered by Mark's contacts. What do you think? I'm not keen on anything too lethal."

"We may not have a choice," she replied as she accepted the paperwork, reading it with interest. "Even though I agree. Hmm. Paintballs with attitude, that's cool. I bet that would slow someone down pretty damn quick."

"Capsaicin does that," he noted. "Especially in the eyes. It's fucking painful."

"That sounds like the voice of experience."

"Let's say that in the riots I got a little too close to some police-grade pepper spray and leave it at that," he smiled. "Not something I'd care to repeat. Even on the skin it hurts, in the eyes it's amazingly painful. The civilian stuff is nothing by comparison."

"I'd prefer not to find out directly," the blonde said with a frown of worry. "I'd suggest some of those and the guns to match, then. They wouldn't require any paperwork, since they're not firearms. I'd think that the Family can probably use them as a pattern and make as many as we need, so I wouldn't buy too many, maybe a couple of dozen with ammo. That would keep us going until Saurial could reproduce them."

"Knowing her, we'll end up with ones that can fire a paintball into orbit or something," Danny grinned. "Which might be overkill."

She giggled, nodding. "True. I'll ask that they end up slightly less lethal. Actually… that gives me a very interesting idea." Lisa looked thoughtful, staring off into space, her expression slowly taking on a very evil smile. "Oh, yes, I can see some possibilities there. I need to talk to Ianthe and Saurial."

"Now I'm getting worried. You have that look again."

"What look?"

"That look. The one that says that someone is about to have a bad day."

"Only if they're stupid enough to try something. But if they are..." She shrugged with an amused and dark little smirk. "They'll regret it."

Regarding her for a moment, he ended up smiling in a similar manner. "I'd rather it not happen, but if it does I want to be on the winning side, so I can't in all honesty say I disapprove too much. Just try not to come up with something too dangerous between you. I know what you're like if you all work together on a project. It gets a bit… odd."

Snickering, she went back to the documents. Eventually they'd made a shopping list, which he scanned over carefully, before nodding in satisfaction. "Great. I'll get Mark on the case. I'm still waiting on more information from various people I've contacted, same with him. I guess we get on with life and see what happens."

"It might be worth thinking about some reinforcements to the fence," Lisa pointed out. "Maybe an inner, removable set of barriers made of EDM? Nothing would go through that. Although it wouldn't stop them lobbing stuff over the top, unless we make a dome over the entire site."

"Which would make working on the ships a bit difficult. Not to mention being very obvious." Danny thought it over. "OK, I could see some added physical security as being useful. The only problem with EDM is that no one but the Family can make it or work it, so we can't really have a permanently fixed fence in the stuff. I can get the engineering department to think about the best design for a portable one, though. I seem to recall something I read online a few years ago about some sort of high security fencing system that was modular and quick to set up. That might be a good place to start."

"Sounds good," she agreed with a nod. "I'll keep working on the problem as well. With any luck, we might be able to avoid it, but best to be prepared."

"All too true." They exchanged an annoyed look, then moved onto more productive and less worrying work.

Missy walked around the corner a couple of blocks from her house, ducking into a space she knew from past experience was very private, between two garages. There was a massive tangle of bushes and vines that grew there on the unclaimed land, neither owner wanting to do anything about it. Even in February with no leaves on the plants it was almost impossible to see through it, or pass through it for that matter.

She knew the trick, though, and was still, annoyingly, short enough and slight enough to wriggle through the first section. Once she gained access to the middle of the clump of vegetation it thinned out remarkably due to the lack of light inside, most of the plants having died off and leaving a space some twenty feet long, ten wide, and about six high, under a mass of thin branches. In the summer it was cool and dark when the plants were fully flourishing and she'd spent quite a lot of time here dodging yet another shouting match between her parents.

After getting in so late the night before she'd been worried that she wouldn't be allowed out again today, but her father had ended up telling her she could go out if she wanted, as long as she stayed out of trouble. He was in the middle of being all passive-aggressive to her mother, who was in turn stomping around cleaning the house in a ferociously pointed manner. Missy was under strict instructions not to stay out past half past nine without calling them, and a very good reason besides, but that still gave her just over five hours to experiment.

All in all she was glad to be out from between the two adults. It mystified her why they stayed together under the circumstances, as they seriously didn't get along most of the time. She loved them both but she also wished they'd just grow up. Or agree to separate and stop torturing each other. Or work it out and get over whatever it was that made them shout so often.

Or something, anything, that would stop the arguing.

Sighing a little at the way marriages seemed to fall apart without any obvious reason, while deciding that when she was old enough to marry she was going to make damn sure that whoever was lucky enough to get her knew how to treat someone, she looked around, carefully probing with her power to see if anyone was in the area. It had been quite a while since she'd hit on the idea of using it as a sort of life detector, which it did quite well with a little care. The process was somewhat tedious but a quick scan was enough to show that the nearest human was probably about a hundred feet away inside one of the houses.

Setting up an invisibility shield around her at a distance of about six feet in the form of a simple cylinder, much like she'd done the first time in the BBFO office, she locked it down then pulled her cloak out of her storage bracelet, foregoing the Vista costume entirely. Just in case, she put on a simple mask that covered her face from the forehead to mouth, with a couple of eye-holes in it. The thing was one of the standard PRT ones that new Parahumans were handed if they came in to register and didn't have a disguise yet. She'd acquired one a while ago as a backup, believing in being prepared.

It was unlikely that anyone would be able to work her identity out, considering her new tricks, but why take chances when the solution was so simple? Accidents happened, after all.

Checking herself over, she made sure the hood was properly in place, then turned on the special effects and activated her 'Cloak' voice. "Now for some... amusement," she rasped quietly, grinning in the privacy of her alternate identity. Wrapping herself in invisibility she dismissed the first light-warp, then made the bushes move out of the way, heading away from the street. When she was clear, she started climbing her staircase, quickly ascending to a couple of hundred feet, before half-running, half-skating across thin air towards the center of the city.

"Beware, criminals, Cloak is on patrol," the girl whispered, suppressing a giggle. "Your misdeeds will be your ruin."

After a few hundred yards, she looked down.

"Oooh, a donut shop. I want a donut."

Misdeeds could wait until after the sugary goodness…

Flying towards Taylor's part of town, Vicky was humming to herself, enjoying the afternoon. She'd cleared up the small misunderstanding with her teacher about when and how she was supposed to hand in set assignments and was now looking forward to spending some time with her new friends. The math wasn't in itself something she'd go out of her way to learn for fun, but Taylor had an entertaining and effective way to teach it, making it much easier than she'd ever experienced before. The girl clearly was brilliant at the subject, undoubtedly knowing more about it than the teachers at school. She wondered if her friend would become a teacher herself as a career, she was very good at it.

Modest about it, too, she'd happily help anyone who asked, but didn't push her abilities in your face. Vicky was aware in her more self-reflective moods that she was somewhat excessive in that respect, although in the last few weeks she'd tried to tone it down. Naturally extroverted, she enjoyed attention, but it had abruptly come to her that this wasn't necessarily the right approach all the time. Something that Dean had tried to tell her on numerous occasions, many of their fights having been related to the subject in one way or another.

Since she'd embarked on a deliberate policy of self-improvement, a large part of which was keeping her aura under rigid control, she'd found that a happy byproduct was that they didn't fight any more. Sure, they had disagreements, but she was able to keep her temper and not storm off, mostly by thinking 'What would Saurial do?' in the same circumstances. The answer was pretty much always 'talk it out calmly', which oddly enough seemed to actually work.

Running into that lizard-girl, even though it had been more than a little embarrassing afterwards, in the long run seemed to have been a good thing. Although she'd been terrified for weeks about her and her sisters.

Raptaur had taken most of the genuine fear away, she was also very calm and friendly, the sort of person you knew would accept a lot without complaint. Right up to the point where you threatened her family or friends, then you died.

She had no doubt about that part at all.

But play fair with her, she reciprocated, and was more than willing to help out. Overall, Vicky thought that meeting the Family had been a good thing for everyone. Amy particularly, her sister had opened up so much in the last few weeks she could barely believe it. If nothing else, she owed Taylor and those reptiles a massive debt for helping Amy like they had. The poor girl had been on the verge of a breakdown, she suspected. It made her uneasy to think about it and the way that their mother had treated the other girl.

Even that was now a totally different game. While Carol wasn't exactly the warmest person you'd ever meet, she genuinely seemed to have come to the conclusion she'd behaved badly and had changed a lot. There was still some friction on occasion but it was trivial by comparison and steadily getting better.

'Now if only we could fix Dad as well,' she sighed mentally. 'I miss the old Dad. I wish Ames could do brains. Or even that he'd take his meds regularly, that helps a lot.'

Perhaps there was something that Ianthe could do about it? The big purple lizard was a healer, after all, and it was possible she didn't have the restrictions her sister did. She resolved to look into it.

Now passing over the outskirts of the commercial district, at one end of the Boardwalk, she heard someone cry out below her. Slowing, she peered down, thinking it had sounded like a man yelling in anger. Floating a couple of hundred feet up she looked around, finally spotting someone running out of a shop with an armful of vodka bottles, another man behind him being the source of the cry and chasing him waving a baseball bat.

The alcohol thief legged it down the street, dropping a couple of bottles which smashed on the pavement, pedestrians jumping out of the way while turning to see what all the fuss was about. Vicky sighed slightly, most people just didn't want to get involved, it seemed. Descending on an intercept course, she stopped and stared as something very weird happened.

"What the fuck?" she muttered under her breath, gaping in disbelief. The thief was still running frantically, but as he passed a particular lamp-post, he was suddenly back at the previous one, in a way that made her brain hurt. It wasn't teleportation, in the normal sense of the word, it was more like the space at the first post was immediately adjacent to the space at the second one.

She lowered herself to just over the ground and watched with amazement while the thief covered the same fifty feet about six times, his pursuer also stopping and gaping. The man himself didn't appear to notice at first, merely kept running, nearly dropping another bottle on the third lap, then looking over his shoulder to see how close anyone was.

Vicky, the shop owner, and a dozen pedestrians all watched as the man ran several hundred feet without leaving that little zone, before finally appearing to work out something wasn't quite right. He slowed down, looking around, a frown on his face. The man from the shop was now grinning, standing with his bat in his hand but lowered to his side. The assembled viewers were smiling, although also looking more than a little confused about what was happening.

"You cannot escape, thief," a whispery and very weird voice said from somewhere nearby. The man twitched violently, as did Vicky and everyone else. It sounded extremely disturbing in a way that reached right down inside your brain and tickled something that was very primitive and worried. She looked around, as did the other witnesses.

Ten feet off the sidewalk in front of the first lamppost, a figure faded into existence, standing on nothing with its arms crossed, the rest of it invisible in the mass of cloth covering it. "Cloak," Vicky muttered, staring at the small form with interest.

Stopping dead the alcohol thief yelped in horror, involuntarily releasing his armload of bottles, which for some peculiar reason only dropped about six inches before landing on thin air with a clatter and rolling around as if they were on a solid surface. The man stared at them, then up at the figure of Brockton Bay's newest cape, before turning on his heel and bolting.

He made it three steps, just sufficient to have built up a good head of steam, before he ran very solidly into nothing, emitting a pained squawk and bouncing off, then landing on the ground with his hands over his abused nose. "Ow!," he mumbled, sounding both pained and shocked. "By dose."

The shopkeeper looked at him with a grin, then up at Cloak, who was radiating an attitude of satisfaction. "Um, thanks?" he called.

"It was my pleasure, citizen," the shrouded small creature said in the same weird voice. "You may collect your appropriated goods, and if someone would care to call the local authorities, they can take possession of the miscreant."

The thief had made it back to his feet, still holding his nose, and was feeling around him with his free hand, giving a very good impression of a mime. Vicky thought this was probably because he really was trapped in an invisible box, something that made her grin. The man kicked out, then hopped up and down as his foot made contact with something unyielding even though it didn't appear to be present. Swearing, he bounced around inside his little immaterial prison more and more frantically, the witnesses videoing this and laughing, until he gave up and slumped against the wall that no one could see.

Nearing sirens heralded the arrival of a BBPD squad car, which disgorged a pair of uniformed policemen who stared in bemusement at the scene, before moving to arrest the thief and take statements from the witnesses and shopkeeper. Vicky floated closer to Cloak, watching her carefully, as the small possibly-a-person turned to regard her. The setting sun cast its light directly into the hood and made her stop dead when she saw very clearly that it was completely empty.

"Fuck me, he was right," she whispered in shock. Cloak tipped her apparently nonexistent head to the side in a manner that emoted curiosity.

"Glory Girl, I believe," she said. "Out of uniform, though."

"I was just going to visit a friend's house and heard the commotion," Vicky replied after a moment. The voice was very unsettling indeed, the lack of visible features even more so. That said she didn't get a sensation of hostility, merely more or less good-natured interest. "There's quite a lot of speculation on the internet about you."

"I am not entirely surprised, humans do seem to be a curious lot," the whispery voice commented. "I find you very entertaining."

"I see," she said, not entirely certain that she did. "I assume that you aren't human, then?"

"That is… not currently relevant." There was a motion that might have been a shrug. "I prefer to keep my nature private."

Vicky nodded slowly, thinking that there were a lot of people around recently who claimed not to be human, most of them for good reasons. She was intensely curious about what was actually inside that cloak, if anything, but wasn't going to push too hard.

Just in case.

"All right, not my business, I suppose," she smiled. "I have to ask, though, are you from the Family? I know some of them and they're good people."

Cloak made something that might have been a laugh, for certain values of the word. It made several people nearby take a step back. "Thank you, I agree," the creature replied. "I am not directly related, in human terms. But we are still closely associated. Saurial is a good friend and mentor. She is extremely skilled in a number of useful techniques that I find fascinating."

By now the thief was in handcuffs and the floating bottles of vodka had been photographed and reclaimed by the shopkeeper, who looked up at them and called his thanks. "It was my pleasure, citizen," Cloak called back. "Officers, thank you for your prompt arrival. I must be about my business."

She began climbing stairs that weren't there, while everyone watched. Vicky stared closely, trying to work out how the trick was pulled off. It was obvious that something was physically present in some weird manner, although she was almost certain it wasn't a force-field or anything like that. She couldn't see anything at all that betrayed the presence of a solid object. Very quickly, Cloak had scurried up to about two hundred feet, enough to clear the bulk of the buildings, and was casually walking along an immaterial surface. Ascending to float next to her, a few feet away, Vicky watched for a moment. Down on the ground quite a number of people were pointing cameras in their direction.

"That is a very cool trick," she finally said, admiringly. "And it looks really strange."

"An interesting and useful application of esoteric mathematical principles," Cloak responded. "Saurial could explain the theory behind it better than I can, although there are few members of your species or mine that could fully understand it. However, it does prove useful." She started moving faster, bounding across the skyscape at a considerable speed. "It was pleasant to meet you, Glory Girl. Perhaps we'll encounter each other again."

"Probably," Vicky smiled. "I'd better get on, I'll be late."

"Until we next meet," Cloak called, as Vicky veered off. When she looked back a few seconds later, there was no sign at all of her. She stopped and peered around, then shook her head in respectful awe.

"Really good trick," she giggled, setting a course to Taylor's house and accelerating. "But I can see why the guys thought she was weird. I wonder what's inside the cloak..."

Retrieving a donut and a can of Coke from inside her hood, Missy popped the tab on the can, then pressed ahead with her intake of as much sugar as possible, while looking around for someone else to freak out.

In Brockton Bay, there were bound to be some criminals along sooner or later if you were patient, and she had lots of donuts to eat while she waited.

Contented with her day off, she wandered in the direction of the PRT building, wondering if she should try the same trick that she'd pulled on Mr Anders on the Director…

Maybe not. She actually respected the woman.

Oh well, she was bound to think of something to do. She was nowhere near bored yet, and she had several hours before she had to go home.

She was going to have to think of something nice she could do for Saurial and the others. They'd opened an enormous amount of interesting things up to her.

'I wonder when her birthday is?' she mused, sipping her coke. 'Maybe I can find out and make her something interesting. A nice sketch or something like that to remind her of home. Wherever that is.'

Shrugging, she kept moving, and eating, mulling over the possibilities. Life was pretty good at the moment.